“The king seized the church at Canterbury, the mother of all England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the neighbouring isles; he bade his officers to make an inventory of all that belonged to it, within and without; and after he had fixed an allowance for the support of the monks who served God in that place, he ordered the remainder to be disposed of at a rent and brought under his domain. So he put up the Church of Christ to sale; giving the power of lordship over it to anyone who, however hurtful he might be, would bid the highest price. Every year, in wretched succession, a new rent was set; for the king would allow no bargain to remain settled, and whoever promised more ousted him who was paying less, unless the former tenant, giving up his original bargain, came up of his own accord to the offer of the later bidder: and every day might be seen, besides, the most abandoned of men on their business of collecting money for the king, marching about the cloisters of the monastery, heedless of the religious rule of God’s servants, and with fierce and savage looks giving their orders on all sides; uttering threats, lording it over every one, and showing their power to the utmost. What scandals and quarrels and irregularities arose from this I hate to remember. Some of the monks of the church were dispersed at the coming of this misfortune, and sent to other houses, and those who remained suffered many tribulations and indignities. What shall I say of the church tenants, ground down by such wasting and misery, that one might doubt, but that worse followed, whether escaping with bare life they could have been more cruelly oppressed. Nor did all this happen only at Canterbury. The same savage cruelty raged in all her daughter churches in England, which, when bishop or abbot died, at that time fell into widowhood. And this king, too, was the first who ordered this woeful oppression against the churches of God; he had inherited nothing of this sort from his father, but was alone in keeping the vacant churches in his own hands. And thus, wherever you looked, there was wretchedness before your eyes; and this distress lasted for nearly five years over the Church of Canterbury, always increasing, always, as time went on, growing more cruel and evil.” There is no word of exaggeration in this pitiful lament of Eadmer’s. England under William II. was at the mercy of a Norman whose notion of absolute monarchy was to bleed the land as a subject province. Courageous in battle he was, and skilful in arms, but utterly heedless of the welfare of the people he ruled. It was enough for the Red King if his demands for money were met. There was no one strong enough to gainsay his will, or stand before him as the prophets of old stood before the kings of Israel, until Anselm came to Canterbury. It is only in the utterances of men like Eadmer we learn something of the misery of the nation.[1]